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OPINION

Meyers: Rep. Bishop serves only the Right, not the people

Liz Meyers was a social worker in Ingham County for over 30 years who worked with many people in need of health coverage and accessible services for themselves and their children.
Published 5:30 a.m. ET Feb. 2, 2017 | Updated 10:04 a.m. ET Feb. 2, 2017

Anyone who is wondering about the dangers posed by the Trump administration doesn’t need to listen to any of his speeches, all it takes is a visit to the district office of Michigan’s 8th District U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop. That’s what I and four other of his constituents discovered on January 17 when we attempted to express our concerns about his pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.

Thanks to the ACA the state’s uninsured rate in Michigan has fallen by more than one-half since it became law six years ago. That means 618,000 Michiganders who would not have had health care do today. To put it another way, that’s more than the populations of Lansing, East Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids combined. But we didn’t only want to share those facts with Rep. Bishop, members of our group also wanted to tell him their first-hand experiences with the ACA and that, without it, they’d have no access to health care.

It would be inaccurate to say Rep. Bishop’s staff slammed the door in our face. In fact, we never even got that far. Rather than be allowed near his office, a member of his staff told us we had to stay in the building lobby. He told us that only two or three people at a time were allowed in the office and that attendance by people from the news was strictly prohibited. He went on to tell us that Bishop does not conduct public forums or town hall meetings because he sees them as “disruptive.” We talked briefly in the building lobby, he took our letters and returned to his locked office. As you can guess, we were disappointed, but we weren’t totally surprised.

Rather than working to protect and improve the ACA, Bishop has instead followed in lock step behind the far-right interest groups who tried to kill the health care law before it was even enacted – even though the ACA was based on a popular program that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney created in Massachusetts.

For Bishop, repealing the ACA isn’t about helping uninsured people in Michigan, instead it’s about advancing the far-right’s agenda. And it doesn’t stop with the ACA. Bishop has consistently voted to defund Planned Parenthood, he earned a zero rating from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, he’s been rated as one of the worst members of Congress by Environment America, and the list goes on.

I’m old enough to remember Governors William Milliken & George Romney and how, though they were both Republicans, they understood that their job was to work for everyone’s benefit – not just the people who voted for them. Bishop is the opposite.

To him, those who have opposing views are an enemy to be fought, not constituents to be listened to and respected. That’s a tragedy, because if he did listen to the people who depend on the ACA he might understand that repealing it may serve the interests of the right-wing in Washington, but it sure doesn’t serve ours.

Liz Meyers was a social worker in Ingham County for over 30 years who worked with many people in need of health coverage and accessible services for themselves and their children.